Locusts and Wild Honey | Page 8

day the winds of heaven blew
down, for our special delectation, at least so we read the sign. Another
time, while sitting by a waterfall in the leafless April woods, I
discovered a swarm in the top of a large hickory. I had the season
before remarked the tree as a likely place for bees, but the screen of
leaves concealed them from me. This time my former presentiment
occurred to me, and, looking sharply, sure enough there were the bees,
going out and in a large, irregular opening. In June a violent tempest of
wind and rain demolished the tree, and the honey was all lost in the
creek into which it fell. I happened along that way two or three days
after the tornado, when I saw a remnant of the swarm, those, doubtless,
that escaped the flood and those that were away when the disaster came,
hanging in a small black mass to a branch high up near where their
home used to be. They looked forlorn enough. If the queen was saved,
the remnant probably sought another tree; otherwise the bees soon died.
I have seen bees desert their hive in the spring when it was infested
with worms, or when the honey was exhausted; at such times the
swarm seems to wander aimlessly, alighting here and there, and
perhaps in the end uniting with some other colony. In case of such
union, it would be curious to know if negotiations were first opened
between the parties, and if the houseless bees are admitted at once to all
the rights and franchises of their benefactors. It would be very like the
bees to have some preliminary plan and understanding about the matter
on both sides.
Bees will accommodate themselves to almost any quarters, yet no hive
seems to please them so well as a section of a hollow tree,--"gums," as
they are called in the South and West where the sweet gum grows. In

some European countries the hive is always made from the trunk of a
tree, a suitable cavity being formed by boring. The old-fashioned straw
hive is picturesque, and a great favorite with the bees also.
The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of
an army; the ranks are being continually depleted, and continually
recruited. What adventures they have by flood and field, and what
hairbreadth escapes! A strong swarm during the honey season loses, on
an average, about four or five thousand a month, or one hundred and
fifty a day. They are overwhelmed by wind and rain, caught by spiders,
benumbed by cold, crushed by cattle, drowned in rivers and ponds, and
in many nameless ways cut off or disabled. In the spring the principal
mortality is from the cold. As the sun declines they get chilled before
they can reach home. Many fall down outside the hive, unable to get in
with their burden. One may see them come utterly spent and drop
hopelessly into the grass in front of their very doors. Before they can
rest the cold has stiffened them. I go out in April and May and pick
them up by the handfuls, their baskets loaded with pollen, and warm
them in the sun or in the house, or by the simple warmth of my hand,
until they can crawl into the hive. Heat is their life, and an apparently
lifeless bee may be revived by warming him. I have also picked them
up while rowing on the river and seen them safely to shore. It is
amusing to see them come hurrying home when there is a
thunder-storm approaching. They come piling in till the rain is upon
them. Those that are overtaken by the storm doubtless weather it as
best they can in the sheltering trees or grass. It is not probable that a
bee ever gets lost by wandering into strange and unknown parts. With
their myriad eyes they see everything; and then their sense of locality is
very acute, is, indeed, one of their ruling traits. When a bee marks the
place of his hive, or of a bit of good pasturage in the fields or swamps,
or of the bee-hunter's box of honey on the hills or in the woods, he
returns to it as unerringly as fate.
Honey was a much more important article of food with the ancients
than it is with us. As they appear to have been unacquainted with sugar,
honey, no doubt, stood them instead. It is too rank and pungent for the
modern taste; it soon cloys upon the palate. It demands the appetite of

youth, and the strong, robust digestion of people who live much in the
open air. It is a more wholesome food than sugar, and modern
confectionery